Features

Fizz Spreads “Anonymous” Harm through the St. Scholastica Community

By Phia Huebner (shuebner@css.edu)

December 13, 2024

    The fad of anonymous posting is nothing new to college campuses, with apps such as Yik Yak and Jodel gaining popularity over the past few years. Although these apps have the potential to be friendly and fun, it is becoming apparent that platforms like this primarily lead to online bullying. It is incredibly easy to be cruel when one’s name is not attached to the words they post. One of these anonymous apps has recently gained popularity here at St. Scholastica. 

    Fizz, like most other apps of its nature, requires your student email address to create an account. This way, everyone with emails from a specific school or institution will be able to see and interact with each other’s posts. Although posting on Fizz may seem purely anonymous as no Fizz users can see the identities of other users, your unique CSS email is still attached to your account and therefore links you to your posts indefinitely. 

     To research this very article, I created my own Fizz account in order to familiarize myself with the structure of the app as well as to take note of what people post and what content is popular. Fizz has a ranking system that places the posts with the most positive interactions under a tab labeled “Top”. There is great variety among the top posts on Fizz, with funny comments about the struggles of doing laundry on campus and comedic blurbs about the abundance of fearless deer. 

     Unfortunately, not all these posts are harmless. If one scrolls deeper into Fizz it becomes apparent that CSS students also take advantage of this app to post blatantly mean things about other students, staff and faculty. Anonymity clearly makes it easier for Fizz users to say things that are simply out of line, with little respect for their community. 

     On Nov. 7, Dean of Students Megan Perry-Spears sent out an email regarding her concerns about Fizz. She urges students to delete the app and stop participating in this harmful platform. Dean Perry-Spears explains how Fizz has the potential to be damaging not only to the mental well-being of individuals on campus, but also to damage our general sense of community at CSS. Perry-Spears wrote in her email that when posts are anonymous “people often are pretty awful and can descend into bullying, racism, sexism, and threats.” Anonymity provides a space for Fizz users to say demeaning and harmful things with little threat of consequences or retaliation. She adds that “even good people can get sucked into saying things they would never say about other people when there is a veil of anonymity”. 

     Posting anonymous comments on Fizz, firstly, is not truly anonymous, and secondly, can be incredibly harmful to your peers and professors. We have a tight-knit community here at CSS that is being harmed by online gossip. Fizz is nothing more than a platform that harbors gossip, rumors and ill intent. As a fellow student, I hope that my peers will come to understand how damaging this app is to our community and refrain from participating in Fizz altogether.